


Simple Tunes

by misura



Category: Lord of Light - Roger Zelazny
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-07
Updated: 2018-11-07
Packaged: 2019-08-22 05:22:26
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,242
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16591616
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/misura/pseuds/misura
Summary: Yama wishes to know what it is like to be sixteen. Sam obliges, more or less. (Mostly less.)





	Simple Tunes

**Author's Note:**

  * For [GloriaMundi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/GloriaMundi/gifts).



> when I saw this prompt, I couldn't resist digging up my battered copy of this book.
> 
> happy Yuletide!

In the land of the witches, far away to the east, where the forces of Heaven would not tread, two men sat, contemplating the meaning of life, the universe and everything.

One of them wore the yellow robes of one who followed the Buddha, though he did not. The other was dressed in all red, which did not signify anything in particular and was therefore a mostly honest statement of his intentions and personality.

"Tell me, what is it like, being sixteen?" said the one in red.

"It was a long time ago," replied the one in yellow. "Another life, in another world."

"Even so. I would know."

The other sighed. "As I recall, it bore a rather close resemblance to being fifteen."

"An enlightening answer. I thank you."

"Your thanks seem to be arriving in the form of a splitting headache."

"Perhaps my thanks are proportionate to the enlightenment your answer afforded me."

"Perhaps," Sam allowed. He lit a cigarette. They were seated on a hillside, looking out over a field, ravaged by some recent battle. The corpses had been cleared some short while since. "Sixteen. It really is a long time ago, you know. Let me think."

Yama said nothing. Sam's headache did not recede.

So. That was how it would be, then. Sam sighed again. "My mother allowed me to give up learning to play the piano, or else I made enough of a to-do about it to be permitted to quit my lessons. I regretted it later, of course. Too late. I tried picking it up again a few times, but in vain."

"Had you been serious about it, no doubt you would have managed."

Sam considered this. "You may be right. Then again, I did manage not to get myself killed the year before. You might call that an accomplishment on its own."

"Having spent as much time with you as I have, I would."

 

The Lady Parvati, who claimed kinship with witches. A bold claim, made less so as it was reciprocated.

"I understand you and my son are close."

Had she not fled, would the witches have come for her? Would they have stormed Heaven, had they judged her safety threatened? Would they have allied themselves with any of the forces arraigned in the final days of Godsend?

Yama, deathgod, did not know, and he found, somewhat to his surprise, that the not-knowing pleased him, somewhat moreso than the feeling of being weighed and judged solely by his relationship to Sam, which was fluid as often as it was solid.

"To what, Lady?" he asked, politely, as he felt a guest ought.

The Lady Parvati smiled. "Take your pick."

Yama considered all that he had seen since coming to the land of the witches. He considered the laboratory that had been built in accordance with his desires and specifications. He considered the Seven Lords of Komlat, and what he might do about them.

"You would have me recreate Heaven."

The Lady Parvati stopped smiling. "Never."

Yama frowned, searching for words. "The engine," he said at last. "The accommodations. The generators. The ability to travel elsewhere, to another world. These are what you would have. For the witches."

"Can you build us a spaceship, Yama?"

Yama said nothing.

 

"A spaceship!" Sam laughed. "When people have only just rediscovered electricity and the lightbulb."

"It would be a challenging project."

"And then what? You can't simply travel to another planet and - "

"History appears to disagree with you."

Sam muttered a curse. "You can't."

"Can't?"

"Shouldn't," Sam amended. "You can. Of course you can. Probably. If anyone can, it's you. There. I said it. Does that appease your vanity? Congratulations. If you wanted, you could be instrumental in fucking up another planet as badly as we've managed to fuck up this one. Good for you. Please don't."

"I have the matter under consideration."

"Great."

"I don't quite see how my decision concerns you."

"No. I suppose you don't."

"Is Parvati really your mother?"

Sam looked surprised. "How should I know?"

"She expressed something of the kind when I spoke to her."

"Maybe she is. Maybe she isn't. I don't think she ever was my wife, and I don't experience any particular paternal or fraternal sentiments around her, for what that's worth. She could have been, I suppose. A long time ago. How is this relevant to our present discussion?"

"Idle curiosity."

"Rather a contradiction within terms when it comes to you."

"I believe she keeps an old piano in the basement."

"And?"

 

And so Sam, who was once the Buddha who preached peace and once Lord Kalkin who delighted in battle, and Yama, deathgod and visitor of splitting headaches upon those who vexed him, descended into the basement of the Lady Parvati's home whereupon they indeed found a piano.

It was an old instrument, where 'old' should be taken to mean 'rundown and half-ruined'.

Sam offered up a rendition of Fur Elise, even so, recognizable mostly by virtue of it being one of the few pieces Yama had heard often enough to be familiar with it.

"I wanted to learn how to play jazz."

"You might have done better to aim lower."

"It's the instrument, not the player."

"Have the kindness to spare me the sermon on reality being subjective rather than objective, I beg you. Have I not suffered enough already?"

"Would you like the lecture on the ideal working of karma instead?"

"I would not," said Yama.

"You would like to build a spaceship. To prove yourself the equal of men and women you have never even known, nor ever will know, as they are long dead, and beyond your reach."

"Your telepathy seems to be about on par with your musical ability."

Sam's fingers stroked the keys, as if in contemplation of an unasked for encore.

"I have given some thought to the building of a worldweb." Yama decided he disliked the sensation of having been successfully threatened, as if this were an interrogation and Sam his questioner, rather than a friendly conversation between two who might be called friends with only a little stretching of the definition. "Some of the prayer machines are still functional. I might make use of them."

"You might help reinvent the combine-harvester. Solar-powered waterboilers."

"Old news."

"You might carry death and destruction to the Seven Lords of Komlat."

"I believe that your mother and her witches have rendered such unnecessary."

"Well then," Sam said. "You might give playing this thing a try yourself, see how easy it is, to get a proper tune out of it."

"Give me five minutes to properly tune it, and I will."

"What a deeply unpleasant person you are." Sam shook his head. "I might as well nip upstairs then, see if there's any more proper wine left. And perhaps some food, too, what do you think?"

"I think you're being ridiculous."

"Old news."

 

In the end, silence. Sam, struggling in spite of himself, remembered a night and a woman and the dress she had worn, a shimmery affair. He had loved her, or perhaps she had loved him. These things happened, and passed, as all things did.

One had to enjoy them, even so. What else was there to live for, if not joy?

Friends, lovers, people who might be family. Music. Good food. Excellent wine.

"What was it like, to go from being fifteen to being fifty?"

"Sudden," Yama said, and kissed him.


End file.
